Lena

Lena, a river of eastern Siberia, rises amid the mountains on the north-west shore of Lake Baikal, in the government of Irkutsk, flows first north-east to the town of Yakutsk, where it is 6½ miles wide, then north to the Arctic Ocean, into which it falls by several mouths, forming a delta 250 miles wide. Its course is 3000 miles in length, the area of its basin 772,000 sq. m. Its chief affluents are the Vilui (1300 miles) on the left, and the Vitim (1400), the Olekma (800), and the Aldan (1300) on the right. Navigation on the Lena is open from Yakutsk upwards from May till October. During spring the waters of the river regularly overflow their banks. The Lena is a principal artery of the trade of eastern Siberia. The riverine sand of the Vitim and Olekma yields richly in gold; salt, coal, iron, copper, and argentiferous lead exist. Large quantities of mammoth ivory have been found in the delta. See G. W. Melville's In the Lena Delta (1885).